Name Michelangelo Bonvicini | ||
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Michelangelo Baracchi Bonvicini is President of Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy launched publicly together with the former French President and Honorary President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on the 27th of November 2009 at the European Parliament.
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Early life
Baracchi Bonvicini, an English and Italian citizen, was born in London and grew up in Italy. At fifteen he left school and continued his classical studies privately. He graduated in History at the University of Bologna.
At eighteen he left for Kosovo where he reported the war in Kosovo (1999) for the Italian editorial group Quotidiano Nazionale, beginning his activity as a foreign correspondence, which brought him to stay first in Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro, then in Israel and Palestine during the second Intifada (2002) and in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, following the US invasion of Afghanistan (2003). In 2003 he published the book Sognando Gerusalemme resulting from his stay in Israel and Palestine in 2002. After 2003 he ceased his activities as journalist, and dedicated himself to research, with special attention to European issues.
Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy
From April 2004 to December 2005 he planned an independent, supranational and non-profit organization for exchange and dissemination of research among the actors of a knowledge society. In January 2006, Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy was formally founded.
For three years from 2006, he promoted and coordinated the start-up of Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy that was kept confidential until the public launch on 27 November 2009, when he and Giscard d’Estaing presented Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy to the European Parliament in Brussels, during its first annual conference.
In 2011, Baracchi Bonvicini and the former President of France Giscard d’Estaing received the medal “Plus Ratio Quam Vis” from the Polish university Jagiellonian University for “their contribution to the European academic community by founding Atomium - European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy”. The medal was first awarded in 1997 to mark the 600th anniversary of the university's re-foundation to Pope John Paul II.
In September 2012, during the negotiations regarding the EU budget for 2014-2020, Baracchi Bonvicini and Giscard d’Estaing together with Felipe González Márquez, as new Chairman of the Advisory Board of Atomium - Institute for Science, Media and Democracy, and former Prime Minister of Spain, jointly signed the appeal “For a European Consciousness, For a More Competitive Europe” published by numerous European newspapers including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, Il Sole 24 Ore and The Irish Times.
REIsearch
Baracchi Bonvicini has worked together with Massimo Marchiori to design and set-up REIsearch, a non-profit European initiative co-funded by the European Commission, Nokia, Elsevier, and other Atomium partners. REIsearch intends to demonstrate how a technological tool, coupled to a broad network of leading media, research institutions, researchers, civil society organisations, and citizens, can help policy makers to make better use of current scientific research.
REIsearch launched on February 15, 2016. This platform is designed to connect citizens, researchers and policy makers on topics linked to scientific research and to societal challenges that Europe will face in the years to come. At launch, REIsearch is running a campaign on chronic disease, which runs for five weeks. The campaign invites European citizens and researchers to take part in a European debates on issues related to chronic disease. The results of this campaign will support European policy makers to take decisions on this subject in the coming years.
In March 2016 the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker declared: "Innovation and new scientific discoveries are improving people's lives and making our economy more competitive. Science should be open and freed from its traditional ivory tower; to be discussed, submitted to critique and fed with new perspectives. That's why I warmly welcome efforts such as the REIsearch initiative to get Europeans engaged in the debate about science and research and inspire fresh ideas about how to solve some of our society's most pressing problems".